Eclectic and striving never to follow paths into ruts, the OF Blog focuses on essays, reviews, interviews, and other odds and ends that might be of interest to fans of both literary and speculative fiction. Now with a cute owl for your enjoyment.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

I thought I would do an inventory of the non-English language books/e-books that I currently own (doing a similar thing for my English-language books would be pointless, since I trade in several dozen if not a hundred or more a month, so it'd be too fluid of a number). I'm going to divide this into two parts, secular and religious, to account for where I shelve some of these books and the uses to which I may or may not put them. The numbers were surprising. The total numbers will be listed first, followed by e-book numbers, if applicable. Not all of these have been read, mind you (some I just collect because I can), but here goes:

Combined with an estimated 1400-1500 English-language works that I still remain, it seems foreign languages are occupying more and more of my libraries, secular and religious alike. Not too bad. Now if only I could be as fluent in all of them as I am with English or even Spanish.

1/19/12 Update:

Changed the totals to reflect 1 Spanish, 2 French, 1 Arabic, and 1 Persian secular books and 1 Persian religious book that I've purchased over the past three days and now have in my possession.

You got more foreign books / grammars / dicrionnaries than I, and in some pretty exotic languages, too (Gurajati, Haitian etc.). Though I can rise you Latvian, Old Norse, and Sanskrit grammars; Old Norse, AngloNorman and Hebrew dictionaries, and a Hebrew Old Testament.

I use Wheeler Thackston's Introduction to Persian (4th ed.) and it is suitable to me as I'm used to self-studying (it's also a classroom book, I should note) and it lays out the grammar in short, sharp chapters. In addition, it also introduces nasta'liq script very early on and uses both print and nasta'liq for its answers. Would I recommend it? Yes, provided that you have some prior experience in studying another language at the collegiate level.

Gabriele,

Give me a few discoveries at my favorite used bookstore and/or a couple of years and I might own most of those as well. I've been strangely reluctant to tackle Biblical Hebrew, though. Maybe after I master the Greek in a few years (I take long breaks between languages. Right now, it's Persian and then a resumption of Serbian, but Russian will be added to the mix shortly).